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White Black Legal – International Law Journal · ISSN 2581-8503
LEGAL STATUS OF LIVE-IN RELATIONSHIPS UNDER INDIAN LAW: A STUDY OF JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION
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Abstract
LEGAL
STATUS OF LIVE-IN RELATIONSHIPS UNDER INDIAN LAW: A STUDY OF JUDICIAL
INTERPRETATION
AUTHORED
BY - AMISHA KOHLI*
Abstract
India
has no central law that defines or regulates live-in relationships. What legal
standing they have has been worked out by judges, usually while deciding some
other dispute: a claim for maintenance, a partition suit, a plea for police
protection, or an application under the Protection of Women from Domestic
Violence Act, 2005. This paper reads that body of case law closely. It shows
how the courts moved from inferring a marriage out of long cohabitation to
accepting cohabitation as a choice that adults are free to make under Article
21 of the Constitution. It then argues that the protection the courts offer
still depends heavily on how much a relationship looks like a marriage, so that
the women in the least secure arrangements tend to be the ones left without a
remedy. The paper also considers what the 2023 criminal codes and the
Uttarakhand registration scheme of 2025 have changed, and ends with suggestions
for a law that looks at how a relationship actually worked rather than at its
resemblance to marriage.
Keywords:
live-in
relationship, relationship in the nature of marriage, Article 21, presumption
of marriage, maintenance, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023, Uniform
Civil Code of Uttarakhand.
1. Introduction
Marriage
in India has always carried more than private meaning. It decides who belongs
to which family, who inherits, and whose children the law recognises. Two
adults who share a home without marrying therefore stand outside most of family
law. Such couples were once rare or hidden. Today, with young people moving to
cities for work, marrying later and insisting on choosing their own partners,
cohabitation is a visible part of urban life, even though it remains socially
contested.
Parliament
has not legislated on the subject. The only central statute that looks beyond
marriage is the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, which
covers a woman in a "relationship in the nature of marriage".[1]
Everything else, from whether cohabitation is lawful to whether the children
can inherit, has been answered by the courts one case at a time. The difficulty
is that these answers have come from separate branches of law, namely evidence,
constitutional liberty, protection from domestic violence and succession, and
they are rarely read together. No study appears yet to have examined how they
fit together after the 2023 criminal codes replaced the old Code of Criminal
Procedure, Penal Code and Evidence Act, and after Uttarakhand made registration
of live-in relationships compulsory. That gap matters, because while the law
stays fragmented, a woman's protection depends on how closely her relationship
imitates a marriage.
The
paper asks four questions:
1. How
have the higher courts shaped the legal status of live-in relationships without
any statutory definition to work from?
2. How
far does the "relationship in the nature of marriage" test protect
women and children, and whom does it leave out?
3. What
have the 2023 criminal codes and the Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand, 2024
changed?
4. What
reforms would bring coherence to this area without taking away the freedom that
makes these relationships a matter of choice?
The
study is doctrinal. It relies mainly on reported decisions of the Supreme Court
and selected High Courts between 1952 and 2025, read for their reasoning, the
tests they apply and the values they rely on. Statutes, committee reports and a
few foreign laws are used as secondary material. The standard texts on Hindu
law treat cohabitation mostly as evidence of a marriage that cannot otherwise
be proved,[2]
while feminist writing has focused on the 2005 Act and on the way later
judgments narrowed it.[3]
This paper tries to bring those strands together. It concentrates on
heterosexual couples, where most of the case law lies, and on the Hindu
Marriage Act, 1955 in matters of inheritance.
2. Meaning of a Live-in Relationship
No
Indian statute defines the term. In ordinary speech it describes two unmarried
adults who share a home and an intimate life over a continuing period. The lack
of a definition causes real trouble, because the same facts can be treated
differently depending on which court hears the case and for what purpose. A
family court deciding maintenance, a magistrate hearing a domestic violence
complaint and a civil court dividing family property may each ask a different
question.
Three
kinds of cohabitation keep turning up in the reported cases. In the first, both
partners are free to marry and live exactly as a married couple would, except
that no ceremony has taken place. In the second, both are free to marry but
have chosen not to, perhaps as a trial or because they reject the institution.
In the third, one partner already has a spouse, or the relationship could not
become a valid marriage for some other reason. The courts have been most
generous to the first group and least sympathetic to the third. The trouble is
that the third group is where a woman is most likely to be left with nothing
when the relationship ends.
3. Presumption of Marriage from Long Cohabitation
The
oldest route to recognition runs through the law of evidence. Courts may infer
that something probably happened when ordinary experience of human behaviour
points that way. That power sat in section 114 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872
and now sits in section 119 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023.[4]
Where a man and a woman have lived openly as husband and wife for years and
been accepted as such, a court may infer that they were validly married.
The
Supreme Court accepted the idea early on in Gokal Chand v. Parvin Kumari,
while warning that the inference can be displaced by contrary circumstances.[5] In
Badri Prasad v. Deputy Director of Consolidation, a couple had been
together for about fifty years; the Court was prepared to infer a valid
marriage and put a demanding onus on anyone who wanted to prove otherwise.[6]
Later decisions such as Tulsa v. Durghatiya and Dhannulal v.
Ganeshram applied the same reasoning,[7]
and in Kattukandi Edathil Krishnan v. Kattukandi Edathil Valsan the
Court relied on it to hold that the son of a long-cohabiting couple could claim
his share of the family property.[8]
The
doctrine has done justice in many individual cases, but its logic is
conservative. The court does not recognise the cohabitation itself. It
recognises a marriage it assumes must have taken place. That is no help to a
couple who never meant to marry, and none at all to a woman whose partner
already had a wife, since no valid marriage can be inferred in that situation.
The presumption answers the question whether two people were married. It says
nothing about what they owe each other if they were not.
4. Constitutional Protection and Personal Liberty
A
second line of cases treats cohabitation as a matter of personal freedom. In Payal
Sharma v. Superintendent, Nari Niketan, Kalindri Vihar, Agra, an adult
woman had been placed in a state home after her father went to the police. The
Allahabad High Court set her free, reasoning that two adults who live together
without marrying may offend public sentiment but break no law, and that a court
must keep the two apart.[9]
The Supreme Court took a similar line in Lata Singh v. State of U.P.,
holding that an adult may marry whoever she chooses and directing the police to
act against those who harass such couples.[10]
The
clearest statement came in S. Khushboo v. Kanniammal. An actress faced a
string of criminal complaints over remarks in a magazine survey that seemed to
approve of cohabitation before marriage. The Supreme Court quashed them all. It
reasoned that the decision of two adults to share their lives is protected by
Article 21, that no penal law makes such cohabitation a crime, and that public
dislike of a practice is no reason to prosecute someone for defending it.[11]
The
ground became firmer after K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India recognised
privacy, including freedom over intimate decisions, as a fundamental right.[12]
In Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K.M. the Court held that neither the State nor
parents can override an adult's choice of partner.[13]
In Nandakumar v. State of Kerala, a marriage was invalid because the
young man was under the minimum age, but the Court held that the invalidity did
not take away the couple's freedom as adults to share a home, and noted that
Parliament itself had acknowledged such arrangements in the 2005 Act.[14] Joseph
Shine v. Union of India then struck down the offence of adultery.[15]
Later, in Deepika Singh v. Central Administrative Tribunal, the Court
observed that unmarried partners and same-sex couples can also form families
with an equal claim to legal protection,[16]
and in Supriyo v. Union of India all the judges agreed that queer
couples may live together free from threat, even though the Court declined to
recognise a right to marry.[17]
The
High Courts, which hear most petitions from couples seeking police protection,
have not always followed this lead. In Gulza Kumari v. State of Punjab,
a nineteen-year-old woman and her partner told the Punjab and Haryana High
Court that they feared her parents. In an order of a few lines, a single judge
declined to act, treating the petition as an attempt to obtain judicial
approval of a relationship that could not be accepted on moral and social
grounds.[18] Other benches have
granted protection in similar situations. It is submitted that orders like the
one in Gulza Kumari cannot stand with Khushboo and Shafin
Jahan. A couple asking for protection are not asking the court to bless
their relationship. They are asking it to stop someone from hurting them, and
that right cannot depend on a judge's view of how they choose to live.
5. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and
Maintenance
Under
the 2005 Act, a woman may seek relief against a person with whom she shares or
has shared a household, if the two are connected in one of the ways the Act
lists. Marriage, blood, adoption and the joint family are on that list, and so
is a "relationship in the nature of marriage".[19]
She may obtain protection orders, residence orders, monetary relief, custody
orders and compensation.[20]
Since this phrase is the only statutory recognition of cohabitation at the
national level, much has turned on how the courts read it.
In
D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal, the Supreme Court compared such a
relationship to a common law marriage and required four things. The partners
had to present themselves to the community as husband and wife. Both had to be
old enough to marry. Neither could be under any other legal bar to marriage,
and in particular neither could have a living spouse. And their life together
had to be voluntary and to have lasted a substantial time.[21]
Casual encounters would not count. The Court also excluded a woman supported by
a man who treated her essentially as a sexual companion or domestic help, a
passage that drew wide criticism for its tone and for shutting out the very
women the Act was meant to reach.
The
Court returned to the question in Indra Sarma v. V.K.V. Sarma. The
appellant had lived with the respondent for about eighteen years, knowing he
had a wife and children. The Court held that her relationship did not qualify,
since she had entered it knowing of his marriage.[22]
It offered a set of indicators for later courts: how long the couple were
together, whether they lived under one roof, whether their money was mixed, how
the home was run, whether the bond was emotional as well as physical, whether
they raised children, how others saw them, and what they themselves intended.
These factors are sensible, and eighteen years together would satisfy most of
them. The appellant lost because the Court treated capacity to marry as a gate
that had to be passed before the factors counted. The Court seemed uneasy with
its own result. It noted that such women are often left destitute and suggested
that Parliament bring them within the Act.[23]
That has not happened.
Maintenance
under the criminal procedure code has had a similar history. The provision
covers a "wife", including a divorced wife, but has never expressly
reached a woman who was not married to the man. The Malimath Committee proposed
in 2003 that it should also cover a woman who had shared a man's life as his
partner over a considerable period.[24]
In Chanmuniya v. Virendra Kumar Singh Kushwaha, the Supreme Court leaned
towards such a reading and sent the question to a larger bench.[25]
In Lalita Toppo v. State of Jharkhand, a three-judge bench avoided a
direct answer, holding that even a woman who could not claim under the Code had
a remedy under the 2005 Act, which in fact offers wider relief because it also
protects her right to stay in the shared home.[26]
When
the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 re-enacted the maintenance
provision as section 144, it left the definition of "wife" untouched.[27]
That was a missed chance. Parliament had the Malimath proposal, the reference
in Chanmuniya and the plea in Indra Sarma before it. A woman in a
long cohabitation must still either persuade a court to infer a marriage or
satisfy the Velusamy and Indra Sarma tests. If her partner was
already married, she can usually do neither.
6. Children and the Criminal Law after the 2023 Codes
Courts
have been kinder to children than to their parents, on the sound principle that
a child should not pay for choices it had no part in. Section 16 of the Hindu
Marriage Act, 1955 treats children of void and voidable marriages as legitimate
but limits their inheritance to their parents' property.[28]
In Bharatha Matha v. R. Vijaya Renganathan, the Supreme Court held that
a child of a live-in relationship could inherit from the parents but had no
claim to ancestral coparcenary property.[29]
That limit was doubted in Revanasiddappa v. Mallikarjun,[30]
and in 2023 a three-judge bench decided that such a child can succeed to
whatever share the parent would have taken had the joint family property been
divided just before the parent died, though the child does not become a
coparcener by birth.[31]
Whether this helps a child whose parents never went through any form of
marriage at all is still uncertain, and children under other personal laws have
received little attention. A child's rights should not depend on the parents'
religion or on the shape of their relationship.
The
2023 codes touch live-in relationships in three places. First, the Bharatiya
Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 does not re-enact adultery, following Joseph Shine.
Second, section 69 makes it an offence to have sexual intercourse with a woman
through deceit, including a promise of marriage never meant to be kept.[32]
Under the old Penal Code such cases were prosecuted as rape, and the Supreme
Court drew a line between a promise that was false from the start and a genuine
promise later broken, treating only the first as destroying consent.[33]
Complaints under section 69 often follow the breakdown of a live-in
relationship, so courts will need to hold on to that distinction if the
provision is not to turn every failed relationship into a prosecution.
Third,
section 85 of the Sanhita, which replaces section 498A of the Penal Code,
punishes cruelty by a woman's "husband" or his relatives.[34]
In Reema Aggarwal v. Anupam, the Supreme Court read "husband"
to include a man whose marriage to the woman was void.[35]
Whether that reaches a man who never went through any marriage is doubtful, and
the new code kept the old wording. Section 119 of the Sakshya Adhiniyam,
meanwhile, keeps the evidentiary basis for inferring marriage, and the easier
admission of electronic records means that joint tenancy papers, bank accounts,
messages and photographs posted online can now be used more readily to prove a
shared life.
7. The Uttarakhand Code and Lessons from Other Countries
Uttarakhand
is the first State to regulate cohabitation directly. Under Part 3 of the
Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand, 2024, in force since 27 January 2025,
couples cohabiting in the State, and residents of the State cohabiting
elsewhere, must file a declaration of their relationship with a designated
official. Registration is refused where a partner has a living spouse or
another live-in partner, is under eighteen, or falls within the prohibited
degrees. If a partner is under twenty-one, the official must inform the
parents. Failing to file within a month can lead to up to three months in
prison, a fine of up to ten thousand rupees, or both.[36]
The Code also treats children of such relationships as legitimate and gives a
deserted woman a claim to maintenance.
Some
of this is welcome. Children now have a statutory basis for legitimacy, and a
deserted partner can claim support without proving that her relationship
resembled a marriage. But the Code again shuts out the partner of a married
man, and by making registration compulsory and punishable it turns a private
arrangement into something that must be reported to the State and, for younger
couples, to their families. That is hard to reconcile with Puttaswamy,
which demands that any intrusion on privacy be backed by law, serve a
legitimate aim and be proportionate. A voluntary scheme would serve the
protective purpose with far less intrusion. Challenges to these provisions are
pending in the Uttarakhand High Court.
Other
countries offer useful comparisons. England and Wales still give cohabitants no
general status; the Law Commission proposed financial remedies in 2007, but
they were never enacted.[37]
Scotland lets a former cohabitant apply for a financial award, judging the
relationship by its length and nature.[38]
Australia identifies a de facto relationship through several circumstances,
such as a common home, financial dependence and care of children, none of which
is decisive by itself.[39]
France lets couples choose a registered partnership if they want one.[40] Indra
Sarma in effect adopted a functional test like the Australian one, but
placed capacity to marry in front of it as an absolute bar, which neither
Scotland nor Australia does. Uttarakhand borrowed the idea of registration but
made it compulsory. The better course for India would be a functional test for
relief and optional registration for couples who want certainty.
8. Findings, Suggestions and Conclusion
The
four questions set out at the start can now be answered.
1. The
courts have built the status of live-in relationships along three largely
separate paths. The law of evidence treats long cohabitation as proof of
marriage; constitutional law treats cohabitation as a freedom the State must
protect but need not regulate; and the 2005 Act treats some cohabitations as
relationships in the nature of marriage. The result is a set of partial
statuses rather than one, and what a couple can claim depends on which path
they can use.
2. The
"relationship in the nature of marriage" test serves quasi-marital
couples reasonably well, and the Indra Sarma factors are sensible on
their own. But because capacity to marry is treated as a threshold, the test
excludes women in long relationships with married men, who are often the most
dependent. Because it values public holding out, it also disadvantages couples
who kept quiet out of fear of their families.
3. The
2023 codes largely carried the old law forward. Maintenance was not extended,
the cruelty provision was not widened, and the presumption of marriage was
kept. The only real change, section 69 of the Nyaya Sanhita, may add to
criminal litigation after break-ups. The Uttarakhand Code is a genuine attempt
at legislation, but its compulsory and penal character raises serious privacy
concerns.
4. Judicial
interpretation has gone about as far as it can. The following reforms are
therefore addressed to the legislature. Parliament should amend the 2005 Act,
or pass a short separate law, so that cohabitation is judged by how the
relationship actually functioned, and capacity to marry should no longer be an
absolute bar; where one partner was married, the court should weigh the
cohabitant's claim against the rights of the spouse and children. The
definition of "wife" in section 144 of the Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita
should be widened, as the Malimath Committee proposed, so that a woman who
depended on a partner through a long cohabitation can claim maintenance in her
own right. The rights of children born of such relationships should be set out
in one statute that applies whatever the parents' religion. Any registration
scheme should be voluntary and confidential. And courts hearing protection
petitions should be guided to grant protection to adults under threat without
passing judgement on how they live. Interviews with family court judges,
protection officers and lawyers would be a useful next step to see how these
tests are applied at trial level.
Over
seventy years the courts have brought live-in relationships from the margins of
the law to a position of constitutional respect, from the cautious inference in
Gokal Chand to the recognition of unmarried families in Deepika Singh.
Yet most of the protection they offer is still borrowed from marriage. The law
has not yet asked, on its own terms, what two people who have shared a life owe
each other when it ends. The 2023 reforms were a chance to begin answering that
question, and it was not taken. Until Parliament acts, the status of live-in
relationships in India will continue to be settled the way it always has been,
one case at a time.
Bibliography
Cases
Badri Prasad v. Deputy Director of Consolidation,
(1978) 3 SCC 527
Bharatha Matha v. R. Vijaya Renganathan,
(2010) 11 SCC 483
Chanmuniya v. Virendra Kumar Singh Kushwaha,
(2011) 1 SCC 141
D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal,
(2010) 10 SCC 469
Deepak Gulati v. State of Haryana,
(2013) 7 SCC 675
Deepika Singh v. Central Administrative Tribunal,
2022 SCC OnLine SC 1088
Dhannulal v. Ganeshram,
(2015) 12 SCC 301
Gokal Chand v. Parvin Kumari,
AIR 1952 SC 231
Gulza Kumari v. State of Punjab,
2021 SCC OnLine P&H 896
Indra Sarma v. V.K.V.
Sarma, (2013) 15 SCC 755
Joseph Shine v. Union of India,
(2019) 3 SCC 39
K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India,
(2017) 10 SCC 1
Kattukandi Edathil Krishnan v. Kattukandi Edathil
Valsan, 2022 SCC OnLine SC 737
Lalita
Toppo v. State of Jharkhand, Criminal Appeal No. 1656 of 2015,
Supreme Court of India, decided on Oct. 30, 2018
Lata Singh v. State of U.P.,
(2006) 5 SCC 475
Nandakumar v. State
of Kerala, (2018) 16 SCC 602
Payal Sharma v.
Superintendent, Nari Niketan, Kalindri Vihar, Agra, AIR 2001 All 254
Pramod Suryabhan Pawar v. State of Maharashtra,
(2019) 9 SCC 608
Reema Aggarwal v.
Anupam, (2004) 3 SCC 199
Revanasiddappa v.
Mallikarjun, (2011) 11 SCC 1
Revanasiddappa v.
Mallikarjun, (2023) 10 SCC 1
S. Khushboo v.
Kanniammal, (2010) 5 SCC 600
Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K.M.,
(2018) 16 SCC 368
Supriyo @ Supriya Chakraborty v. Union of India,
2023 SCC OnLine SC 1348
Tulsa v. Durghatiya, (2008) 4 SCC 520
Uday v. State of Karnataka,
(2003) 4 SCC 46
Statutes
The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (Act 46
of 2023)
The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Act 45 of 2023)
The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (Act 47 of 2023)
The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (Act 2 of 1974)
The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 (Act 25 of 1955)
The Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (Act 1 of 1872)
The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act,
2005 (Act 43 of 2005)
The Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand, 2024
Code civil (France)
The Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) (Australia)
The Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006
Reports
Government of India, Report of the Committee on
Reforms of Criminal Justice System, vol. I (Ministry of Home Affairs, March
2003) (Chairperson: Justice V.S. Malimath)
Law Commission of England and Wales, Cohabitation:
The Financial Consequences of Relationship Breakdown (Law Com No. 307,
2007)
Books
Flavia Agnes, Family Law Volume II: Marriage,
Divorce, and Matrimonial Litigation (Oxford University Press, New Delhi,
2011)
Paras Diwan and Peeyushi Diwan, Modern Hindu Law:
Codified and Uncodified (Allahabad Law Agency, Faridabad, 27th edn., 2025)
Indira Jaising and Pinki Mathur Anurag (eds.), Conflict
in the Shared Household: Domestic Violence and the Law in India (Oxford
University Press, New Delhi, 2019)
[1]The Protection of
Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (Act 43 of 2005), s. 2(f).
[2]Paras Diwan and
Peeyushi Diwan, Modern Hindu Law: Codified and Uncodified (Allahabad Law
Agency, Faridabad, 27th edn., 2025).
[3]See generally
Flavia Agnes, Family Law Volume II: Marriage, Divorce, and Matrimonial
Litigation (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011); Indira Jaising and
Pinki Mathur Anurag (eds.), Conflict in the Shared Household: Domestic
Violence and the Law in India (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2019).
[4]The Bharatiya
Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (Act 47 of 2023), s. 119; corresponding to the Indian
Evidence Act, 1872 (Act 1 of 1872), s. 114.
[24]Government of
India, Report of the Committee on Reforms of Criminal Justice System,
vol. I (Ministry of Home Affairs, March 2003) (Chairperson: Justice V.S.
Malimath).
[26]Lalita Toppo v.
State of Jharkhand,
Criminal Appeal No. 1656 of 2015, Supreme Court of India, decided on Oct. 30,
2018.
[27]The Bharatiya
Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (Act 46 of 2023), s. 144; corresponding to the
Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (Act 2 of 1974), s. 125.
[28]The Hindu Marriage
Act, 1955 (Act 25 of 1955), s. 16.
[32]The Bharatiya
Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Act 45 of 2023), s. 69.
[33]Uday v. State of
Karnataka,
(2003) 4 SCC 46; Deepak Gulati v. State of Haryana, (2013) 7 SCC 675; Pramod
Suryabhan Pawar v. State of Maharashtra, (2019) 9 SCC 608.
[36]The Uniform Civil
Code of Uttarakhand, 2024, Part 3, ss. 380, 386, 387.
[37]Law Commission of
England and Wales, Cohabitation: The Financial Consequences of Relationship
Breakdown (Law Com No. 307, 2007).
[38]The Family Law
(Scotland) Act 2006, ss. 25-29.
[39]The Family Law Act
1975 (Cth), s. 4AA.
[40]Code civil
(France), arts. 515-1 and 515-8.
How to Cite This Article
AMISHA KOHLI, LEGAL STATUS OF LIVE-IN RELATIONSHIPS UNDER INDIAN LAW: A STUDY OF JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION., White Black Legal – International Law Journal, ISSN: 2581-8503, Vol. Volume 4, Issue VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1, September 2026, pp. 1030-1044. Available at: https://www.whiteblacklegal.co.in/details/legal-status-of-live-in-relationships-under-indian-law-a-study-of-judicial-interpretation
Author & Publication Record
Authors: AMISHA KOHLI
Registration ID: 107119 | Published Paper ID: WBL7119
Year: Sep- 2026 | Volume: 4 | Issue: 1
Approved ISSN: 2581-8503 | Country: Delhi, India
Page No.: 1030-1044
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